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Haiti
Now in its fifth summer, DukeEngage provides the opportunity for undergraduates to undertake a fully funded eight-week civic engagement project, independently or on a group program. Many of the group programs are based in nontraditional destinations for American college students, including Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, Uganda, and Vietnam. The single largest DukeEngage program, though, is based in Duke's own city, Durham.
New York University, well on its way to becoming the first truly global university, is starting a new partnership with the University of the People, a unusual nonprofit online school offering free classes to students around the world.
Haitian university officials made an emotional plea today for more international aid in the aftermath of the devastating January earthquake. In particular, they argued the urgent need for scholarships for Haitian students to continue their studies at home. Delegates noted that many students are too poor to take advantage of foreign scholarships, most of which do not cover air fare and other expenses.
The devastation in Haiti was so widespread that it was immediately clear in the weeks after the earthquake that all levels of education suffered the deaths and injuries of students and instructors, and the collapse of classrooms. But a study issued Tuesday by Haiti's Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development, a respected think tank, documents the extent of the damage, and of the problems that existed previously.
How can Haiti hold on to the already fragile strings of democracy without all of those public spaces? Which to re-build first? Can Haitian civil society and its struggling democracy really weather such a blow? The questions and challenges are baffling. But from the perspective of a university president, the questions and issues are even more disturbing.
The January earthquake in Haiti prompted a spike in interest in service vacations, sometimes called "voluntourism," several organizations report. However, it may not be the time for many unskilled volunteers to flood into Haiti. Many organizations are advising people on other ways or places they can help.
While the idea of a group of students taking short trips to impoverished and natural disaster-prone places is nothing new, travels to Haiti this spring are being discouraged by many colleges and aid groups. Even so, hundreds if not thousands of other American college students are determined to lend a hand in the coming weeks. (And more may be interested in traveling to Chile to aid with relief and rebuilding in the aftermath of the major earthquake that hit early on Feb. 27.)
Haiti's best universities are in wreckage, their campuses now jumbles of collapsed concrete, mangled desks and chairs, and buried coursework. Hundreds of professors and students were entombed, although the exact number of dead is complicated by the fact that class lists and computer registries were also wiped out by the quake. The obliteration of higher education is expected to have longstanding effects on this devastated country, where even in the best of times a tiny percentage of young people went on to college.
Lynn University officials have confirmed that the U.S. Department of State has notified the family of the passing of Britney Gengel. Britney was the last person to be identified with the "Journey of Hope" charity group who went to Haiti, from Lynn University in Boca Raton, to help feed the poor. Six of the fourteen students and faculty who went on the mission were found in the ruins of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince.
A second Lynn University professor has been identified and found dead in Haiti. School officials said Saturday that 59-year-old Richard Bruno has been officially declared dead. His body was found at the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, along with the bodies of three students and another professor. Bruno was an assistant professor in Lynn's College of Liberal Education.
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